Wireless signals propagating in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band are susceptible to suffering from increased path loss and severe channel intermittency. For example, the blocking of mmWave band signals by common building materials (e.g., brick or mortar) or by other obstructions in the user's environment can lead to significant drops in transmitted signal strength. In an attempt to address these impairments, 5G new radio (NR) cellular networks provide a set of mechanisms by which user equipment (UE) devices and mmWave next generation Node Base (gNB) stations can establish highly directional transmission links through the use of high-dimensional phased arrays (e.g., multiple input output (MIMO) antenna arrays). Notably, the use of directional transmission links can be used to leverage the resulting beamforming gain, thereby sustaining an acceptable communication quality and throughput. These beamforming directional transmission links, however, require the transmitter and receiver beams to be precisely aligned through a set of operations known as beam management. These beams are fundamental to perform a variety of control tasks including i) the initial access for idle users, which allows a mobile user equipment to establish an optimum link connection with a gNB, and ii) beam tracking, for connected users, which enable beam adaptation schemes (e.g., handover, path selection, and radio link failure recovery procedures).
In 5G NR, the conventional wide beam-based cell sector coverage that is typically used with long term evolution (LTE) is not used. One disadvantage of the LTE-based wide beam coverage is that if the base station transmits a signal to a mobile terminal in a particular direction, the base station will transmit a cell sector wide signal using MIMO techniques that can affect the link budget and as well as introduce signal interference. In contrast, beam-based cell sector coverage is largely used in 5G NR. In particular, beam-based cell sector coverage increases the link budget and can, along with beamforming techniques, overcome the drawbacks exhibited by mmWave channel use. For example, beamforming combines the signals transmitted from multiple antenna elements in an antenna array, such that the combined signal level increases when several signal phases align (e.g., constructive interference). The signals from each antenna element are transmitted with a slightly different phase (delay) to produce a narrow beam that can be directed precisely towards the receiver. In 5G NR networks, the performance monitoring of the beam management used to conduct gNB-UE communications is necessary to effectively facilitate massive MIMO, particularly in mmWave frequencies. Namely, the gNB and user equipment are continuously acquiring, tracking, and switching the beams as needed in order to achieve the best communication performance. However, at present, there is no efficient way of emulating the aforementioned beam scanning, tracking and switching in 5G test environments.
Accordingly, there exists a need for methods, systems, and computer readable media for testing and modeling the beamforming capabilities of a gNB element.